


Sacrifices

by rabidsamfan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Beeton Off, Darkfic, Hiatus fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Reichenangst, Torment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-23
Updated: 2009-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:34:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Beeton Off prompt: Watson/Moran and/or Watson/Holmes: noir AU - During the hiatus Colonel Moran goes back to London to find new bait for his elusive quarry, Sigerson. The Irregulars scatter before the hunter, but twice-bereaved Watson is another matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is about as dark an idea for fic as I've ever had, which is why there are scraps of it as opposed to something longer. Consider yourself warned!

"The Colonel says ain't no one gets to see him till they've took a turn feeding the goat, but you won't mind that once you've tried it. Hell, it'll spoil you for half the whores in Whitechapel, won't it, Smitty? And it's the one thing Mr. Run-for-the-hills Sherlock Holmes can't do, guaranteed." The pair of ruffians sniggered and leered at the initiate, tugging at their crotches to indicate their meaning.   
  
"The goat?" Holmes asked, glad that his disguise was holding up, but appalled to think that Moran was deliberately fostering bestiality in his gang. Still if an amorous encounter with a quadruped was what was needed to find Moran, and more importantly, to find Watson, then he'd find a way to manage it.  
  
"Bait for the tiger," Smitty said, and pushed him through the last door. A battered, emaciated, all too familiar figure knelt in chains in the far corner, fellating another member of the gang. Holmes felt a sudden rush of cold down his spine as his sponsors grinned and patted him on the shoulder.  
  
"You wouldn't have thought a man could live on just what he can swallow from other men, would you?"  
  
"Go on, then. Your turn."


	2. Chapter 2

"Mycroft!" 

The number of men who would address him by his first name had dwindled into one, long since, but he still took his revolver with him to the door, and spoke before opening it. 

"The Swiss Family Robinson," he said. "Where did they live and why?"

"In the apple tree, to be closer to the harvest," came the prompt reply. "Let me in."

He sighed, and opened the door. "Sherlock," he began, meaning to deliver a diatribe about the late hour, and then caught his breath at the sight of the man his brother was holding upright. "Good God."


	3. Chapter 3

"Won't they come looking for him?" Mycroft asked, once the morphine had made it possible for the scarecrow on his couch to slip into sleep.

"That won't be a problem." Sherlock was stripping off the layers of his disguise, everything but the extra weight he had laboriously put on in order to fool Moran's men. Mycroft caught sight of both their faces in the mirror and knew that they'd never looked so much alike even in childhood. Except for the eyes. That once strongest point of resemblance would never be the same unless, God save him, Mycroft ever committed murder.


	4. Chapter 4

They travelled disguised as hired nurse and recuperating invalid. It wasn't until they were safely in France, away from the coast where the natives were more likely to understand English, that Holmes dared reduce the dosages of the drug. The first night of convulsive nightmares almost made him reconsider, but he persevered, thinning the solution more each day and attending his patient all the more scrupulously. Reintroducing Watson to solid food was going to require conscious cooperation, after all, and besides, sooner or later he would have to know whether or not he'd rescued a man or a walking corpse.


	5. Chapter 5

There were some small indications - a chess piece moved in his absence, the feeling of being watched discreetly from the other chair - but for the most part Holmes had to be content with the knowledge that Watson was gaining back his strength and beginning to move more easily, keeping up the pace on their daily walks, as if he'd finally noticed that the weight of chains no longer bound him. But the everlasting silence, the grand gift he had once praised, now grated against Holmes's very soul. It was only in the grip of nightmares that Watson still had words.


	6. Chapter 6

Long months in exile, wondering if only the cobbles of London might serve as touchstones to Watson's memory. Long weeks of walking from village to remote village, eschewing the trains and stations and stares of strangers.

Long days of silence. Long nights of holding Watson in his arms and whispering comfort to keep the dreams away.

Long hours in Vienna with the alienist who, through persistence and hypnotism, finally managed to resurrect the ghost of a little boy called Johnny, who took comfort by sucking on his thumb and wondered every night why his Mama didn't come to sing him to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

"Even under hypnosis he refuses to accept that I came back, and believes nothing of these past two years! It makes no sense! How could he possibly wish to think that he is still a prisoner of Colonel Moran?"

"He prefers you dead."

"Dead? But..."

"Dead. If you are just a kindly ghost, Herr Holmes, then Colonel Moran is a liar, and everything he did and said untrue. Gone. As if it never happened. Do you wonder that your friend prefers to think himself a ghost too, as you and he wander through the world? Purgatory is better than Hell."


	8. Chapter 8

In the end all their travels led them back to Reichenbach.  
  
Johnny launched pinecones into a muddy backwater of the cataract under Steiler's eye while Holmes went on alone to the base of the Falls, all too aware that this fresh betrayal had even more potential for disaster than the first.   
  
The final few yards of the climb were nightmarish, the rocks slick under hand and foot, the roar of the water like a stone against his chest. At last he stood beside the glacier-born maelstrom, already half-frozen by the endless spray. He stared into the churning waters, trying to will himself into finding the courage to make the plunge, and all the while Moriarty's death screams and Freud's final dictum battled for supremacy within his memory.  
  
 _"I do not think he will believe you are alive unless he himself pulls you from the water."_  
  
It had to be done.  
  
He leapt.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://cox-and-co.livejournal.com/216509.html) and [here](http://cox-and-co.livejournal.com/217430.html). With thanks to daylyn for helping me clarify what needed clarification.


End file.
